The Woman From Tantoura (34 page)

“Our project rests on three bases: The first is the purely legal basis, which depends on studying the law in the various European countries, searching for openings we can use to file suits. The second is making a list with a number of potential suits, and providing the necessary evidence for them—documents, testimony, studies, etc. The third basis is the human element: contacting the injured parties in whose names claims might be made or who would accept the role of witnesses, and contacting lawyers. What I mean is the formation of two networks, a network of injured parties and another network of jurists, lawyers, and legal consultants. That’s a rough summary, since I don’t want to go on and on, or drown you in legal jargon.”

“Abed, are you dreaming? Or looking for work for yourself? Damn it, Brother, what you’re saying isn’t worthy of a young man like you, who knows the history of the Palestinian cause and the role of the international community in our disaster.” Sadiq looked at me, mocking, “Your son has been affected by the talk going around about disavowing violence and the possibility of solving our problem peacefully. Have you visited Egypt recently, or have you met Abu Ammar?”

Abed’s face reddened, and he raised his voice, “Shame on you, Sadiq. I’m talking seriously. If you’re interested, listen to the end, if not, I’ll leave tomorrow.”

“Neither your mother nor Maryam nor I have any part in this visit! If only out of respect for us say, ‘I’ll leave the day after tomorrow, and I’ll spend the day with you because I miss you!’ What’s happened to you, have you gone mad? Sometimes I’m tempted to kidnap you and bring you here to work and get married and live like the rest of God’s creation. Europe has made you lose your mind—no wife and no suitable work, you dress like a bum and hang a backpack over your shoulder. What’s happened to you?”

Abed jumped up. “Do you have anything to drink?”

“Yes.”

“Will you have a glass?”

“I will.”

Sadiq got up and brought the bottle of whiskey, two glasses, and ice cubes, and poured for himself and for his brother. Abed looked at me.

“Will you join us?”

I laughed. “No, thanks. Enjoy it.”

“I’ll illustrate it for you by two examples, one easier and apparently simpler, and the other more difficult and more complicated. We can file a suit, not now but in a few years, since I expect new legislation to be promulgated in a year or two. We can file a suit against those responsible for what happened in Sidon, for example: shelling the school and killing everyone in it, the destruction of the hospital with those in it, what they did in Ain al-Helwa. What’s needed? First, that we contact the injured parties and we inventory the damages: mass murder, imprisonment, torture, destruction of homes, etc. One or more people will file the suit on their own behalf or on behalf of themselves and others. So the second requirement is to contact those people, to listen to them, to identify those best suited to file the suit and who want to do that, and those best suited to testify as witnesses. We can contact the director of the school and get detailed testimony from him. We can go back to the man responsible for civil defense in the south; he has the reports of foreign reporters published in their newspapers at the time. We have the mass graves, including the one now at the basketball court in the school courtyard, covered by asphalt.

“Who will you file the suit against?”

“Against the Israeli defense minister and the chief of the general staff, and others as well.”

“But it was war.”

“It was an invasion. But neither war nor invasions allow massacres or shelling the houses of civilians or destroying hospitals on top of their patients or killing children in their schools. The conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war do not permit
torturing or killing them. All of that happened in Sidon and Ain al-Helwa. We will have to study what happened, to work on the legal definitions, to research criminal legislation in European states that allow claims of this kind to be made.”

“Let’s assume you can file the suit. Can the judgment be made in absentia? And does international law allow you to demand that the accused be handed over? What about state sovereignty and the immunity of national leaders?”

“The basic principle of internationally binding legislation gives states the right for their courts to investigate the most flagrant cases, specifically crimes of massacre, torture, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, even if these crimes occurred outside of their territories and if there is no direct link between these states and the criminal, the victim, or the site of the crime. Those who have immunity today, because they are prime ministers or ministers, will lose their immunity after a year or two. Now I’ll give you the other, more difficult example: imagine if the legislation that we expect will be promulgated, for which we are already seeing good omens, imagine if it allowed us to bring a case concerning Tantoura. Our mother could bring it: there’s the massacre, a war crime, and a crime against humanity. There’s the plunder, which requires compensation for the village lands, fields, plantings, and animals that they seized, and for the houses and furnishings.”

“Will we give up the right of return?”

“Of course not. That’s the right for you to return to your country. They threw us out, and we have the right to return. They plundered our private possessions, so we have the right to go to court to reclaim them.”

“Who would you bring the case against, in this instance? Would it fail because of how much time has passed? Most of the leaders of the Israeli army in ’48 have died, maybe all of them.”

“This point is subject to research, and we need dozens of things to research it: we need capable jurists, researchers, and historians, and we need to convince the residents of the usefulness of making
the claim. Filing a suit is expensive, but I’m not talking about filing suits now, because that comes later and our project may not take part in it directly. We only want to prepare the ground, in the sense of a), researching the legal grounds; b), forming a network of residents whose interests are affected, on the one hand, and of capable jurists and lawyers who want to participate in the project, on the other; and c), setting up a database of documents and studies that will permit us to file suits in the future. Imagine, Brother, if a person or a group of people from a Palestinian village that was destroyed, where the lands and the residents’ possessions were plundered, brought suits—the courts would have 418 cases at the least. If the residents of the villages that experienced massacres brought suits, we have before us twenty massacres, some bigger than those in Tantoura and Deir Yasin. These massacres are well known, but researchers might discover others no one recorded.”

Sadiq was now pacing back and forth. He stammered, “You’re dreaming, Brother, by God, you’re dreaming. If only we could get our rights by law—who among us would choose all this blood?” He sat down suddenly and said, “Why didn’t you mention the case of the massacre in Sabra and Shatila, and the kidnap victims, when you have a direct interest in it, you and me and Hasan and Mother and Maryam?”

“There are ten files on the schedule, each of which has a probable case that needs work, including Sabra and Shatila, of course. Maybe the whole idea came to me when I was thinking about what happened in Acre Hospital. In short, Brother, we need time, we need money, and we need to work night and day.”

“And what will you do if none of these regulations that you are counting on is issued?”

“They will be issued, all the indications are that they will. In fact, a law of this kind was issued a few months ago in Belgium, but it’s not sufficient.”

“What if you file a case and a second and a third, and lose them, or what if contrary regulations were issued, limiting cases of this kind?”

“That could happen. You’re as likely as not to lose when you embark on a new project. But then the cases will generate public opinion, informing people of these crimes.”

“What people?”

“In Europe.”

“They can go to hell, they’re complicit. These crimes happen before their very eyes and they don’t lift a finger.”

“That’s an oversimplification, Brother. People in general are not that bad. There are giant corporations with vested interests who are murderers, prepared to go to any length. Then there are people, the mass of people, ordinary people who want to live securely, to raise their kids and to enjoy small pleasures, a soccer match, or two weeks of laziness on a sunny beach. People who are concerned and who feel real pain when they see children killed unjustly. They aren’t animals, just people like you and me, and sometimes better, because they haven’t experienced the violence that would breed violence in them.”

46

The Chain

I burst out laughing, and I laughed so much I had to hold my sides. I said, “You’re incredible, Abed!” We were sipping coffee, about to leave for the airport to see him off.

Sadiq said, “Be sure you have your passport and your plane ticket. Be sure you didn’t leave your wallet or any of your cards. Be sure …”

Maryam laughed. “Sadiq, why do you insist on treating us as if we were kids?”

Saying goodbye is hard. I think that I’ve gotten used to it, and then when the time comes, I discover that that’s a delusion. Abed looked at his watch. “We’re leaving in ten minutes, aren’t we? Five minutes and I’ll be ready.” He went into the room where he slept and came out carrying his small leather bag, hung over his shoulder, with a thick nylon case for the suit his brother had given him in his left hand, and a nylon bag in his right.

Sadiq commented, “What wrong with a suitcase? Wouldn’t that be better than having something in each hand, like this?”

Abed put down the bag with the suit next to him and opened the other bag, saying, “This bag is for you, it’s gifts.”

“What gifts?”

“The gifts I brought for you.”

“And you’re giving them to us now, when you’re leaving?”

“I forgot. I missed you so much that when I saw you, I forgot!”

I laughed, and kept on laughing as I saw Abed give Maryam and Sadiq and his wife and children their gifts. When he extended his hand to me with a very small bag, smaller than half my palm, I was still laughing.

He said, “It’s a silver chain.”

I spread it on my palm to look at it.

Abed said, as he kissed my head, “I’ll tell you the story of it on the way.”

He wanted to keep me from becoming emotional over it. He plunged into a long story about his Iraqi friend Mustafa, who designed the chain for him. Mustafa is a Kurd but his teacher Yahya Nasir is a Sabian, do you know who the Sabians are? He talked about the Sabians, and about Yahya Nasir who taught Mustafa silversmithing. He talked about Mustafa’s family, living in Kurdistan, in Iraq, and he talked about the Kurds. He said that Mustafa is a visual artist and not a silversmith by trade, but that he designed the pendant. He said, “He’s a genius.” He talked about his art, about the show he had in Paris, and how dazzled people were. He talked about how he met him, and how he became his friend. He talked about when he left Iraq and why he left it, and how he moved around in a number of countries until he eventually settled in Paris. Abed did not stop talking until we went into the airport and he had only enough time left to kiss us, to say goodbye, and to pass to the other side of the wall.

On the way back Maryam started talking endlessly, like her brother. She talked for half the trip, and then the words stopped. She said, “Shall I sing for you?”

Sadiq said, “No.” We made the rest of the trip in silence.

No sooner did I return to the house than I put on the chain. It has stayed on my neck, its pendant hanging two inches below my
throat, with the cord around it and hanging lower, to the top of my breasts, with the key to our house in Tantoura. I wake and sleep with the two chains, and like my mother, I do not remove them, even to bathe.

It’s strange: I would have asked Abed to stop talking about his Kurdish friend and the friend’s Sabian teacher, were it not for the awkwardness. But that boring talk became part of the gift, not only that night, when I opened the latch of the chain to put it around my neck, but also whenever I look in the mirror or touch the pendant with my fingers or feel it on my skin. The silver pendant looks like the cover of a book the size of a finger joint, or a miniature page torn from a miniature notebook. A silver sheet with one word inscribed and enameled, in ornate kufic script: “al-Tantouriya,” the woman from Tantoura.

47

The Research Center (II)

Sadiq called Sumana and gave her the letters he had brought her from the post office box. Then he opened a brown envelope and took out some journals, saying, “Hasan sent them to me by mail. He has an article in them. He sent a copy for me and a copy for you and one for Maryam.”

He handed me the journal, after opening it to the beginning of the article. I saw the title with Hasan’s name under it. I paged through it; it was a long article.

It’s strange. I read everything Hasan writes, even if I don’t grasp half or two-thirds of it. I read his master’s thesis because it was written in Arabic; the doctoral thesis was in English, and I was not able to read it. It reached me by mail when we were in Alexandria, and I asked Maryam to read it and summarize the contents for me. Maryam laughed, and said, “I would have to read it and then make sure that I understood it, so I would have to read it again, and then summarize it, and then Hasan will come and you’ll discover that your daughter is a dunce who summarized it wrong because she got it all wrong!”

Hasan insists on sending me a copy of any article or book he publishes. He waits two or three weeks, and then he calls. “What do you think?”

I laugh. Every time I laugh and I feel the blood rush to my head. I say, “I never got beyond high school, Hasan!” Or, “I haven’t finished a book since I left school except for your books, so how can you ask my opinion?”

He always repeats the same expression: “I care about your opinion. Anyway I didn’t write a book of physics or math. Did you read the book?”

“I read it twice and I liked it a lot, but …”